Sunday, November 06, 2011

Apple's aesthetic dichotomy | Made by Many:

When one talks about Apple's design, one immediately thinks of Jony Ive's modernist, rational industrial designs for computers, peripherals, and of course the iPad and iPhone.

These devices have become increasingly simple and pared down, even as the power contained in them has increased. There is very little, if anything, extraneous on the Magic Trackpad or the MacBook Air. And of course the iPhones 4 and 4S are radically simple, yet well-constructed masterpieces of industrial design.

But there's something I've puzzled about for a long time in Apple's aesthetic. Inside these unsentimental, rational, economic designs, Apple has delivered an increasingly sacchirine series of